


Sherlock, the Drug

by Rinari7



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:11:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5992744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinari7/pseuds/Rinari7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock… he remained a game she would always win, but still a game she could not foretell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sherlock, the Drug

She protected Joan Watson, for now, because Watson was hers to vanquish. She would, eventually, prove her superiority over Watson, though perhaps she would preserve her in some way still, like she had Sherlock—a sort of tribute to them for presenting her with a challenge in the first place.  
It was such a rare thing. She appreciated unique, interesting things.  
  
Sherlock… he remained a game she would always win, but still a game she could not foretell.  
She had assumed Joan Watson was unique—but no, he had found, and more puzzlingly still, let go of, another protegée. He really was proving quite valuable, in his own way—supplying her with opponents who, while not on her intellectual level, should at least be less terribly boring and bumbling than most law enforcement. She found herself, perplexingly, with little interest in toying with the redhead.

  
Jamie Moriarty was ruthless—of that there was no doubt.  
Still, the girl needed more time to develop into a worthy opponent, and she could have her victory for now—perhaps forever, if Jamie so desired. Part of the amusement of possessing the kind of power she did was exercising it, deciding whether someone died—or someone lived, on your whim.  
Her work was actually quite good, the girl's. Kitty—such a stupid, pet's name. She could have gotten away with it, and the viciousness was really to be admired. Chemical burns are really quite unpleasant, fitting for a rapist. But then, Sherlock did seem to have an affinity for those with hidden depths of ferocity.  
  
Moriarty waited with bated breath to see Joan's inner animal truly emerge, that willingness to kill for some reason or another. She waited to be able to tweak and bait it out and drag her around by that figurative ring through the nose. Patience always was her forté.  
She wasn't quite sure if Watson would remain interesting after that, though she had a hunch she somehow would.  
  
Still, it wasn't Watson she wrote to on a regular basis—she would have preferred every day, but of course the post took too bloody long for that. And she wasn't going to seem so blatantly desperate by writing when she wasn't written to.  
Jamie Moriarty, _the_ Moriarty whose name was whispered in the heights and depths of humanity with a mixture of reverence and fear, was above that.  
But then, she wasn't quite, was she? She never _felt_ desperate, she never allowed herself that, but she had known that actions speak louder than words when she canceled the hit on him, exactly four years, seven months, and five days ago.  
  
Unwittingly, he had voiced her own sentiments to a room full of recovering addicts many years after she had first admitted it to herself, in no words at all.  
“I am without peer, and it is terribly lonely, and there is little I wouldn't do to change that if I had the chance.”  
He was addicted to heroin, to the high it gave him, the pause from incessant sensations, thoughts, details. She, well, she was addicted to him, to the stimulation (intellectual and otherwise) he provided. He—his own mind, his trainees, his emotions, _him—_ he was the ultimate game, and she doubted the time would come when she would have had enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I realized I had this on my hard drive for a while and never published it.  
> Little plot, maybe not even that deep of a character study, but I figured I'd share it anyways.


End file.
